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'Selling' Buffalo Niagara to Site Selectors

 by James Fink
Friday, July 15, 2011

>>> View A Million Reasons Video

Randall Clark admits to being a tad selfish.

The chairman of Dunn Tire LLC  said he thinks if more people and businesses move to Western New York or expand here, his company will sell more tires. Dunn Tire is on pace this year to sell more than 850,000 sets of tires.
“I can’t sell tires to people who don’t live here,” he said.

That’s just one of many reasons why Clark is a strong regional advocate.

As a past chairman of the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise  , he has seen how the region has improved itself in the key world of site selection by real estate and economic development groups.

“We’re in the game now,” Clark said. “We weren’t before.”

The Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, meanwhile, is designed to work with site selectors and the real estate/economic development communities – locally, nationally and internationally – to sell them on the notion of having their clients invest in the region.
Site selectors are key players in economic development circles. They often are the ones whose recommendations go a long way toward determining where an expansion or new operation will take place. Consider them like sports agents in the free- agent business world.

Slightly more than a decade ago, a group of prominent business leaders got together at the Buffalo Club to discuss why the region was being bypassed for so many economic development opportunities. The answers were obvious: high taxes and a tough regulatory environment.

High taxes and onerous regulations remain, along with the attitude from some community groups that development represents the “evil empire.”

To combat those issues, the region needed a single entity to market itself to real estate and economic development insiders. That led to the creation of Buffalo Niagara Enterprise.

The BNE’s role has been an evolutionary one – but one that works.

While the BNE has its critics, many agree that thanks to its efforts, Western New York is now on the radar screen of more site selectors and economic development decision makers.

“Nothing gets our word out better than successful stories,” said Tom Kucharski, president and CEO.

The region has had some significant wins including landing major back-office operations by Yahoo  , Geico  and CitiGroup.
Norampac, a division of Cascades Inc., recently decided to invest $430 million to expand its Niagara Falls plant – a move that will create 108 new jobs. The BNE and others spent several years courting the company.

The BNE also played a major role in convincing Alpina Foods of Bogota, Columbia, to open a Northeastern operation in Batavia’s Genesee Valley Agri-Business Park. Alpina is investing $15 million to build the 28,000-square-foot plant, which is expected to initially employ 50.

The County of Cattaraugus Industrial Development Agency, meanwhile, worked with Scott Rotary Seals to build an 11,000-square-foot plant in Olean instead of Minnesota.

“There seems to be a lot more interest in what’s going on here than there was before,” said John Cappellino, vice president of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency.

Despite a sluggish national economy, the BNE scored nine major wins during fiscal 2009-10. Those resulted in $11.8 million in new, private-sector investment and could see 578 jobs created and 1,501 more retained.

Since its inception a decade ago, the BNE has had 272 “wins” that added up to $2.9 billion in private-sector investment and 36,882 jobs created.

“Are we on the list (of site selectors)? Sure we are,” said Bob Schell, president of Pyramid Brokerage Co. of Buffalo  .
Both Kucharski and Clark say the work of BNE is a long way from being finished.

“We’re in the game now, and before the BNE, I think it was fair to say we weren’t in the game,” Clark said.

Western New York remains saddled with New York’s longtime reputation of a high- tax state, as well as a generally unfriendly attitude when it comes to economic development projects.That perception must change, sources say.
“You do a deal and get a win and other site selectors do take notice,” according to Kucharski.
When the BNE was created in early 2000, its leadership took a shotgun approach simply to get the

Western New York name into site-selector circles. There were lavish exhibits at key conferences and a fair amount of wining and dining.

“If we had to do it over again, we would have done it exactly the same way,” Clark said. “We had to get our name out first.”
Now the BNE has a targeted, almost niche-oriented base that focuses on developments in such areas as back-office data centers, life sciences and agri-business.

“The bottom line is you’ve got to give the site selectors a very compelling reason to pick your community and you have to realize every other community is doing the same thing,” Kucharski said.